Recent Fossil Record (Full Version)

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DanJames -> Recent Fossil Record (9/22/2008 5:52:50 PM)

A discussion that went off topic. New OP: does the presence of "living fossils" provide evidence of a young fossil record?

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ORIGINAL: KaseyTom

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ORIGINAL: DanJames

I don't think this argument holds much water because there are a lot of things in the fossil record that are still alive today that were never described in the OT. Strangely, the fossil record is chock full of things that are still alive and unchanged today, and we suppose that they represent a 500,000,000 year old ancestor.


Imagine if all the thousands of species of dinosaurs that lived during some part of the 160 million years spanning the Triassic to the Cretaceous period lived together at the same time. There would dinosaurs of all shapes as sizes everywhere. Add to the all the other extinct species of animals that lives at one time or another during the last 500 million years. There would be bazaar and exotic animals covering every foot of the land. The air would be full of flying reptiles and foot long insects.

There would be nematodes and jellyfish, sponges and coelacanth, squids, crabs and... oh wait. All those appear in the fossil record and are still alive today. Animals go extinct, it happens all the time. Does evolution predict that every species will stay alive? No. Does it predict that every species will go extinct? Not necessarily. Should there be numerous examples of species that have remained unchanged for 500 million years? I don't think so. Perhaps you'd disagree?
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The sea would be full of massive reptiles and sharks as big as whales and the beaches covered with thousands or species of crabs. Then consider the all the extinct plants.

Ok, I'm considering the extinct plants... and I'm thinking that there are a lot of plants today that are exactly how they were when plants came onto the land 425 million years ago.
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Then there is also the issue of striation. The fossilized remains of plants and animals that lived at different periods are usually found in different strata of rock, clay, shale, and earth (sometimes geologic events mix them up). Had they lived at the same times their remains should be found all jumbled together.

Because I am not a geologist, and do not fully understand the current creationist model, I'm not going to touch this one. In fact, I don't think you're going to find any creationist geologists on this site at all.



essentialsaltes -> RE: Recent Fossil Record (9/22/2008 6:45:07 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: DanJames
Ok, I'm considering the extinct plants... and I'm thinking that there are a lot of plants today that are exactly how they were when plants came onto the land 425 million years ago.


Cooksonia is pretty odd looking. No leaves, flowers or roots. Other early plants are apparently described as enigmatic since they are so odd.

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Then there is also the issue of striation. The fossilized remains of plants and animals that lived at different periods are usually found in different strata of rock, clay, shale, and earth (sometimes geologic events mix them up). Had they lived at the same times their remains should be found all jumbled together.

Because I am not a geologist, and do not fully understand the current creationist model, I'm not going to touch this one. In fact, I don't think you're going to find any creationist geologists on this site at all.


Too bad, since the stratification of fossils is unmistakable and deserves an explanation. If trilobites lived at the same time as human beings, why aren't trilobites found associated with human remains?
I don't think trilobites are found with dinosaurs, either.
Or trilobites with birds.
Or dinosaurs with humans.
etc.



DanJames -> RE: Recent Fossil Record (9/22/2008 7:35:11 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

quote:

ORIGINAL: DanJames
Ok, I'm considering the extinct plants... and I'm thinking that there are a lot of plants today that are exactly how they were when plants came onto the land 425 million years ago.


Cooksonia is pretty odd looking. No leaves, flowers or roots. Other early plants are apparently described as enigmatic since they are so odd.

This plant isn't actually all that odd, but it does bear great similarity to a group of extinct plants called the Rhyniophytes, which are similar to the present day living plants called psilotophytes. For whatever reason, none of these lower vascular plants managed to survive, though their predecessors and successors are still alive today. I guess being 2 inches tall and vascular just isn't the way to go in today's environment. Cooksonia looks like all the other rhyniophytes that are vascular, have no leaves, dichotomously branched "stems" that terminate in a sporangium, and I'd be willing to bet this guy is a gametophyte dominant plant just like all the other rhyniophytes.
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Too bad, since the stratification of fossils is unmistakable and deserves an explanation. If trilobites lived at the same time as human beings, why aren't trilobites found associated with human remains?
I don't think trilobites are found with dinosaurs, either.
Or trilobites with birds.
Or dinosaurs with humans.
etc.

As Jack has noted, stratification is becoming less and less defined. Fossils that were supposed to end in a particular era are being found higher and lower than they should have, and currently the lowest common ancestor of the animal kingdom has changed from the sponge to the jellyfish. I would love to take 7 hours out of my day collecting the head-knowledge necessary to articulate the particulars of why these fossils are SOMEWHAT stratified, but I'm going to stick to biology, and what paleontology I can.
By the way, AiG has recently updated their Flood model to become more accommodating to more recent research in catastrophic plate tectonics.



RobertByers -> RE: Recent Fossil Record (9/22/2008 10:09:31 PM)

Living fossils , which is almost everything, is a embarrassment to evolution. Evolution is all about explaining the complexity of life due to great time passing. So much change to justify makes it impossible for this and that to have escaped change if evolution true. Saying creatures found their perfect niche is impossible while everything else could never finds its niche a zillion times over for each thing.
Living fossils just reveal the true answer is that creatures were created and then adapted, post fall, and post flood to fill the earth as God commanded directly after each event.
The creatures were in their most glorious diversity right quick and later this or that extinction reduced them. The fossil record just shows momments in time. The begining diversity. The living fossils are just survivors, over a few thousand years, from a greater diversity and unrelated to evolution. Survivors just can live everywhere and so more easily survived events of extincyion.



Raptorman -> RE: Recent Fossil Record (9/23/2008 12:28:17 AM)

This is one of the more interesting questions about the Young-Earth model, one which I have pondered quite a bit -- "How can all of these species have lived on Earth at the same time?"

On the one hand, there is quite a gap between the number of species estimated to be in the fossil record and the number actually known to modern science. For instance, when scientists say that 99% of Earth's life is extinct, it's not because we have found a hundred times more species in the fossil record than we have discovered alive today. We have discovered tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of species fossilized, but one rain forest alone can easily contain millions of species -- insects, reptiles, amphibians, spiders, mammals, etc.

On the other hand, it does not logically follow that today's biosphere dwarfs the fossil record as it actually exists. It is all but a certainty that the reverse is true. We only started digging out and categorizing mineralized organisms in earnest a couple of centuries ago, so the geological record almost certainly holds more fossils than we can ever imagine. And on top of this predicament, many species live in environments which, in most cases, are not at all conducive to fossilization (jungles, swamps, prairies). Again pointing to rain forests, I doubt you'll easily find the fossil of an anaconda, or a toucan, or any of the many species of rhinoceros beetles or parasitic wasps. The environment usually does not lend itself well to mineralizing animal/plant remains. Entire families or orders could have existed in the past, and we would never know it either because a specimen was never fossilized, or the fossil remains have been destroyed as Earth recycles its own crust by erosion, weathering, volcanic activity, conversion to metamorphic rocks, or any number of other geological processes. The planet would indeed seem crowded if it simultaneously harbored so many groups of animals competing for the same resources.

I admit that this question can be a sticky point for Young Earthers, and I would love to get an answer to it.



KaseyTom -> RE: Recent Fossil Record (9/23/2008 10:04:43 AM)

Consider just the very large and dangerous extinct animals for which we have entire skeletons all living at the same time. Many of these animals have been found in Egypt, Iran, Iraq and other places well known to people of biblical times.



DanJames -> RE: Recent Fossil Record (9/23/2008 11:24:45 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: KaseyTom

Consider just the very large and dangerous extinct animals for which we have entire skeletons all living at the same time. Many of these animals have been found in Egypt, Iran, Iraq and other places well known to people of biblical times.

Are you referring to the ones that are buried? Modern Flood models predict that they weren't buried where they stood. In fact, they don't predict that Egypt, Iran, Iraq and other places well known to people of biblical times are where they were before the Flood. But secondly, we don't necessarily know that all T-Rexes were ferocious. One might think that a Panda is ferocious by looking at its fossil remains, yet there it sits, scarfing down plants. Genesis records God giving the animal kingdom the plant kingdom for food. They didn't necessarily all keep that command, but that's the way it was recorded. Naturally, after the Flood you would get food where you can find it, so animals that have the capacity for eating other animals would do so, and animals that could not would still eat plants. We don't KNOW what the T-Rex ate, is all I'm saying.



DanJames -> RE: Recent Fossil Record (9/23/2008 11:28:17 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Raptorman

This is one of the more interesting questions about the Young-Earth model, one which I have pondered quite a bit -- "How can all of these species have lived on Earth at the same time?"

On the one hand, there is quite a gap between the number of species estimated to be in the fossil record and the number actually known to modern science. For instance, when scientists say that 99% of Earth's life is extinct, it's not because we have found a hundred times more species in the fossil record than we have discovered alive today. We have discovered tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of species fossilized, but one rain forest alone can easily contain millions of species -- insects, reptiles, amphibians, spiders, mammals, etc.

On the other hand, it does not logically follow that today's biosphere dwarfs the fossil record as it actually exists. It is all but a certainty that the reverse is true. We only started digging out and categorizing mineralized organisms in earnest a couple of centuries ago, so the geological record almost certainly holds more fossils than we can ever imagine. And on top of this predicament, many species live in environments which, in most cases, are not at all conducive to fossilization (jungles, swamps, prairies). Again pointing to rain forests, I doubt you'll easily find the fossil of an anaconda, or a toucan, or any of the many species of rhinoceros beetles or parasitic wasps. The environment usually does not lend itself well to mineralizing animal/plant remains. Entire families or orders could have existed in the past, and we would never know it either because a specimen was never fossilized, or the fossil remains have been destroyed as Earth recycles its own crust by erosion, weathering, volcanic activity, conversion to metamorphic rocks, or any number of other geological processes. The planet would indeed seem crowded if it simultaneously harbored so many groups of animals competing for the same resources.

I admit that this question can be a sticky point for Young Earthers, and I would love to get an answer to it.

I'm not exactly sure how much land mass the pre-Flood world had, nor am I sure what percentage of its population was fossilized. I think, though, I would give a circular argument that goes something like this: you can tell how much land mass there was by the number of fossilized remains, therefore the fossilized remains could not have overpopulated the pre-Flood land mass.
No, I'm sure there are more scientific ways to find out how much land mass there was, perhaps by studying the layers that fall below the ones with fossils to see if there is evidence of them being under water.
About as helpful as a cold, I'm sure.



Bettawrekonize -> RE: Recent Fossil Record (9/24/2008 2:28:51 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Raptorman
This is one of the more interesting questions about the Young-Earth model, one which I have pondered quite a bit -- "How can all of these species have lived on Earth at the same time?"


Perhaps it's the case that earlier organisms had a lot more genetic diversity than modern ones (as in the case of trilobytes) and they had more mechanisms of creating a more diverse array of offspring (ie: genetic drift). The reason that it would make sense for organisms to be able to assume a more diverse array of phenotypes would be so that they can adjust to a more diverse array of possible environmental changes. As time goes by, there would be some environmental possibilities that many organisms were never exposed to and, as a result, they may lose their ability to adapt to those environmental possibilities as efficiently/effectively. Hence, over time, we would expect the diversity of organisms to decrease (which seems to be the case with all these mass extinctions, though part of that maybe due to anthropogenic factors). It's not necessarily the case that all of life's diversity existed on the earth all at once. Perhaps there were originally, say, 5000 distinct "kinds" (organisms that don't share a common ancestor, and of course, the number 5000 is just a number I made up, who knows what the true number is), and many of those organisms did diversify (change) many generations down the line. That's not to say that their ability to change is plausibly limitless and that organisms can plausibly originate new appendages, limbs, organs, organ systems, body plans, etc... or the DNA for them via evolution.

Another possibility is that there were fewer of each specie living on earth at the same time (ie: fewer humans).

The answer may lie in a combination of both possibilities as well.



RobertByers -> RE: Recent Fossil Record (9/25/2008 10:42:59 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Raptorman

This is one of the more interesting questions about the Young-Earth model, one which I have pondered quite a bit -- "How can all of these species have lived on Earth at the same time?"

On the one hand, there is quite a gap between the number of species estimated to be in the fossil record and the number actually known to modern science. For instance, when scientists say that 99% of Earth's life is extinct, it's not because we have found a hundred times more species in the fossil record than we have discovered alive today. We have discovered tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of species fossilized, but one rain forest alone can easily contain millions of species -- insects, reptiles, amphibians, spiders, mammals, etc.

On the other hand, it does not logically follow that today's biosphere dwarfs the fossil record as it actually exists. It is all but a certainty that the reverse is true. We only started digging out and categorizing mineralized organisms in earnest a couple of centuries ago, so the geological record almost certainly holds more fossils than we can ever imagine. And on top of this predicament, many species live in environments which, in most cases, are not at all conducive to fossilization (jungles, swamps, prairies). Again pointing to rain forests, I doubt you'll easily find the fossil of an anaconda, or a toucan, or any of the many species of rhinoceros beetles or parasitic wasps. The environment usually does not lend itself well to mineralizing animal/plant remains. Entire families or orders could have existed in the past, and we would never know it either because a specimen was never fossilized, or the fossil remains have been destroyed as Earth recycles its own crust by erosion, weathering, volcanic activity, conversion to metamorphic rocks, or any number of other geological processes. The planet would indeed seem crowded if it simultaneously harbored so many groups of animals competing for the same resources.

I admit that this question can be a sticky point for Young Earthers, and I would love to get an answer to it.


The earth before the flood would be a great diversity. After the flood it was also with only a remnant now around. The amazon was what the whole earth was like after the flood and before.
In a single acre one can find dozens of the same ant bit in as many species. In other words every few miles had a different kind of rapter your namesake.
No problem with filling the earth with them as plenty of roome. the flood fossilized those in certain areas but must of missed a great deal.
Creationism need only expand diversity at the flood and later to explain the great diversity. Its very reasonable to see our present earth as a poor picture of the past even with our large diversity.



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